English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Tuvalu (??) just some of the languages in which people have featured WakaWaka. We have received a lot of exposure but to be mentioned as a personal favorite by a Forbes editor... I thought that would be worth mentioning! Thank you TJ McCue!!

Crowdfunding and Kickstarter are nearly synonymous today. If you have contemplated getting funding for your company with a product or service that you can go direct to customers, then you have likely heard of the website Kickstarter. If you haven’t, read on.

Here are three of my favorites, still in funding mode for a few more days:

Coolest Solar LED light called the WAKAWAKA. It provides an innovative and affordable way to provide lighting in developing nations.

Crowdfunding is going to change the world for maker companies as well as small business in general. Kickstarter is one of the market leaders in the burgeoning space and one to watch. I would love to hear your story about innovative crowdsourcing/crowdfunding projects. Please share your crowdfunding tips in the comments or directly with TJ McCue on Twitter. http://twitter.com/tjmccue

WakaWaka!! $40,000 and counting! we're Amazed!!

A week before Christmas we weren't sure whether we would make it or not, but now we're seeing new backers almost every hour!!! I cannot describe the feeling of immense appreciation this gives us!

The WakaWaka campaign is in it's final 48 hours... and you are our greatest fans!! so forgive me sincerely for making a final and last minute appeal to you on behalf of the 700 kids of the Mwamtsefu school in Kenya.

We are a WakaWaka Team of 670 people right now! and currently we have pledged to donate 212 WakaWaka's to the school. 212 kids & teachers will be able to read in evening, they may even be able to follow evening classes now as well! The representative of the school (Willie from www.wenzi.nl ) was thrilled to hear about your donations!! Like no other she realizes how your WakaWaka's will have a major impact on the lives of these kids, but also on their families and the whole community they live in!

Now.... bare with me... 700 - 212 = 488 students who still need to use dangerous toxic and expensive kerosene lights while watching their class mates show off their WakaWaka's ... We can't let that happen right?? RIGHT!

So, I get down on my knees one more time but not just for WakaWaka but for the Mwamtsefu kids. Please see whether you can find another $ 30 to change the life of a Kenyan family and make a serious impact on the future of a Mwamtsefu student! you can raise your current pledge with $30 and keep your current reward the same. We'll do the math.

If we can all do this... than the WHOLE SCHOOL can receive a WakaWaka! how incredibly awsome would that be!!!!

Whether we make it or not, every additional WakaWaka = 1 life changed, so hopefully you will all make one last effort these coming hours... mail your friends, family, colleagues, classmates, team mates, facebook friends or people you don't even know and tell them about the last 48 hrs for WakaWaka's for Kenya!

THANK YOU - THANK YOU - THANK YOU - THANK YOU - THANK YOU !! ALL!!

With sincere gratitude on behalf of the entire WakaWaka team,

Camille

ps. if you have increased your pledge already, 1000 THANKS again! I hope I am not over asking...

YOU DID IT!!! WakaWaka reached it's $ 30,000 funding goal!

On November 8th we launched our Kickstarter WakaWaka campaign and we set a funding goal of $ 30,000. The Kickstarter average is much lower, around $ 7,000, so we knew it was an ambitious goal with a product which was designed for people who earn less than $ 2.00 a day and don't have Kickstarter access, let alone the money to back us. We designed WakaWaka in such a way that it would be apealing to us 'Westeners' as well, but Kickstarter has so much to offer in terms of cool gadgets, wannahaves and great products, so we knew we were up for a challenge with our goal. But we need this in order to get started, so anything less would not get us where we needed to be.

About 10 days ago, we were getting a bit nervous, at the speed the campaign was going, we might just not have reached our goal, so we stepped up our efforts, we asked all of you to help us, tell your friends and we even mobilized Santahimself to support us. It seems that the Christmas spirit is still very much a live in many of us... Since Christmas we have received a lot more pledges, higher pledges and many of you increased the pledge for various reasons, but surely also to help us (as in : all of you and us) reach our goal. AND IT WORKED!!!

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

You have made this possible! And on top of funding our tooling and our scheduled field test, you also donated over 130 WakaWaka's to the Mwamtsefu school in Kenya! I will be uploading some pictures of this school this weekend. They are thrilled!!

Below is our campaign graphic, as you can see since Christmas we jumped upwards! it's such an incredible cool experience knowing there are 493 people who believe in WakaWaka and in our team which is responsible for making WakaWaka a success by making it available to those who need it most.

Together with all of you we will be making a significant difference to people living at the 'Bottom of the Pyramid' and we hope we will be able to reach millions! in the coming years. That is our ambition. "if you don't reach for the stars, you will never reach the sky". As far as we are concerned we're now 'Sky High' on Kickstarter! being in the top 1% of most funded projects ever on Kickstarter!!

We still have 1 week left and we hope of course you will use that week to tell about your success story with WakaWaka. Yes, it's YOUR successstory as well. We hope this will result in a few more WakaWaka's we can donate to Mwamtsefu as there are 700 kids in this school. We wouldn't want to dissapoint the other 570 kids right?? ;-)

So, although the pressure is off now, we hope this message excites you enough to send a victory message to your favorite magazines, blogs and FB pages. We hope you will Tweet about WakaWaka a Solar Light with a "Success" Story! Maybe you know companies who would like to donate a couple more WakaWaka's and be a bright light in the evening so Kids can actually study and increase their school results.

THANK YOU!!

It has been a Merry Christmas for WakaWaka !

Many thanks to all our Christmas backers! In the past 24hrs you supported WakaWaka with more than $ 2,500 !! which is more than 5 times the daily average we have seen during our campaigning! Thank you thank you thank you!

We received a lot of messages this Christmas from people who have been telling their friends and family about WakaWaka over their Christmas dinners, I know I have haha. We have seen a lot of Backers who have also increased their pledge. Some very significantly even. Thank you !! this is the true Christmas spirit, but I believe also the Kickstarter spirit! Your support ensures a robust start of WakaWaka in 2012 for which we're currently making the preparations. More about this soon...

We're in the final stretch of our campaign and our funding goal is within reach! Please write to your favorite magazines and send them a 'tip' with our kickstarter link :

Ho Ho Ho! Season Greetings from the WakaWaka Team!

We're well on our way to our $30,000 funding goal! It's ambitious, we know that, but it's what we need to get started and give WakaWaka the wings it so needs. Thank you all for supporting WakaWaka in the past weeks! you have posted on blogs, spread the word through facebook and twitter, some of you have written articles yourself and we have received a lot of inquiries for distribution as well! Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

But this would't be Kickstarter if I didn't ask for your support once more: at the speed we're going now, we'll come up just a little bit short of our funding goal... that would horrible since it would mean that no one would get their rewards, no WakaWaka´s! I am sure you will agree that we cannot let this happen, so I appeal to you again this Christmas time, tell your friends and family about WakaWaka and tell them to make a pledge and if they like, they can donate lights to a school in Kenya as well! Be a Light for someone else this Christmas as well.